The Real Cause of Allergies: It’s Not What You Think - Dr. Barrett Deubert

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. Today, we are talking about why allergies are exploding, the root cause, and what to do about it. Today's gonna be a twenty minute jam packed information direct to you on how to resolve allergies as a not a problem, but there's other problems upstream that are driving these excessive allergies. What you can do about some tips, some tricks, and really just helpful for most parents to help children that are dealing with eczema or food allergies. It's like, why are we seeing so much of this?

And why does it feel like every kid today has allergies? Now adults are developing them too, right? So food allergies, peanuts, dairy, gluten seem like they're everywhere. Environmental allergies and dust, pollen, and dander. We see skin conditions.

It's like every week I have a new patient who's coming in just because of eczema in their child, and we are even seeing excessive respiratory asthmatic conditions in children today. And so allergies are not bad luck. You weren't dealt a bad hand. They are a signal that the immune system has lost tolerance. We are doing a workshop coming up here in a few weeks.

Grant, what's the date on that? Twenty seventh. We're going to do a workshop April 27, 6PM at our West office. And it is all about healing the gut. We're going to talk about the digestive system, why that's the master control of the immune system, and what you can be doing to maximize the health of your gut.

Make sure you go to our Instagram or connect with us directly to get signed up. Let's get back to the immune system and specifically address allergies. Immune system, the immune system as a whole, is a defense system and it's a tolerance system. In essence, your immune system should recognize what is self and what is non self, and it should have an appropriate response to those two. Allergies, on the other hand, is an overreaction to harmless stimulus.

So, pollen is harmless. Allergies is an overreaction to that pollen. Really, dairy, you know, A2 casein, the protein found in dairy, this is a harmless stimulus. It's actually beneficial for the body. But the immune system overreacts to dairy, or overreacts to eggs, or overreacts to peanuts, or overreacts to fill in the blank.

And the mechanism is through a part of the immune system called the IgE response. This is where mast cells are formed, and it releases histamine. When we look at this process, it's driving inflammation markers up, And so the immune system is it's really in this state is acting like a fire alarm is going off, but yet you're all you're doing is you gotta you gotta bagel in the the oven. Right? I mean, you just a little bit of smoke and also the fire alarm's going off.

It's an excessive response. So why is this happening? I'm gonna give you the main reasons why allergies, asthma is happening today in such high proportions. Number one, the primary driver, the gut. The gut is not healthy.

70 to 80% of the immune system is in the gut. It is essential to have a healthy intestinal lining. And yet what we see is these undigested large proteins that penetrate the intestinal barrier and they cause immune activation. If the gut's inflamed, the immune system is gonna get confused. It's as simple as that.

Number one, the gut. Number two is we have lost diversity and quantity of the microbiome. When we look inside the gut, there are beneficial bacteria and yeast that should be in there. Yet, what we find is that we've been overly prescribed antibiotics, we live in a hyper sterilized environment, we lack the diversity and even the natural exposure to microbials. So it's not like we're playing in the dirt, right?

We're playing in dirt that might be sprayed with pesticides and herbicides that have killed all organisms, but we aren't getting diversity and microbiome support through even fiber. C section births, we're not getting vaginal flora. And so we've traded infections for immune dysregulation, in essence. And when you look at, number one, the GI system, number two, the microbiome, those are both in the gut. This is the main thrust behind getting allergies resolved.

Number three is environmental toxic burden. There is mold in our environment like never before. There's more chemicals. There's more pesticides and herbicides. There's the indoor air quality is worse than it's ever been.

I mean, you look at everything is plastic. Everything's petroleum. There is a massive amount of toxic load, and this is gonna create chronic low grade immune activation, which is gonna create chronic inflammation. There's also been a dietary shift. Number four is we're eating more ultra processed foods, higher omega six content, lower omega three content, less sauerkraut, kombucha, kimchi, more food dyes and preservatives, more sugar than ever, and its result is chronic inflammation and altered gut microbiome.

If you wanna affect an immune system, you give a kid sugar. If you wanna kill organisms in the gut, you give a kid ultra processed foods. And that is our standard American diet today. Number five, the last one, immune system undertraining. What do I mean?

There's a hypothesis, we call it the hygiene hypothesis. And the simplification of it is the immune system needs reps, K? And today, it's just not getting them. Think of it in the gym. You wanna get bigger, stronger?

You gotta do reps. You gotta put in weight. Right? You gotta put in work, lift weight, high sets, high reps. What you did last week isn't sufficient for the next week.

You gotta add more. So the reps for the immune system, k, is dirt. It's getting dirty. Right? Yet what we're seeing is less dirt, less exposure, less resilience, hyper sanitization.

I mean, we're using alcohol swabs and everything, hand sanitizers for everything, and this is creating excessive hygiene that's leading to a disruption on our microbiome. Kids are getting hit harder than ever before. Developing immune systems are more sensitive to disruption. It's why kids are more vulnerable. And yet they're getting early antibiotic exposure.

They're not really getting breastfeeding for the first couple years of life. They're getting more formula. They're getting more screen time, less outdoor time. And these kids are not broken. Their environment is just shaping this immune response that we're seeing today.

So what do we do about it? Right? Let's go practical application. How do we help support a child's immune system? Number one, you got to fix the gut.

Remove inflammatory foods, process ultra processed foods, sugars, seed oils, and add in bone broth, add in fiber, add in fermented foods, add in high quality protein. If you add in high quality protein, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, you're gonna be moving in the right direction. And if you can somehow get some fermented foods in their body, it's going to help tremendously. Number two, support the microbiome. Whether that's taking a strain specific probiotic, whether it's getting in some prebiotics, is more fiber, or just getting outside and getting natural exposure, you definitely need to increase bacterial loads in the gut.

Number three, reduce the toxic load. Get air filters in the home. Get a HEPA filter. If you're dealing with allergies, in your room, a HEPA filter and start purifying that air. All right?

Get a carbon filter system so that when that air is getting cleansed, it's cleaning out even the chemicals and organic chemicals found in in your furniture. It's getting cleaned out in that filtration system. Make sure you're getting clean water. Get a reverse osmosis system for your drinking water and start swapping household products, whether they're cleaning products or whether they're bath and beauty products. Start making a shift to cleaner products.

Number four, you gotta calm the immune system down. Fat soluble vitamins are fantastic to help calm the immune system down. Colostrum is a game changer when it comes to calming the immune system down. Omega three fatty acids, fantastic to support healthier immune systems and the sleep regulation. You gotta get adequate sleep.

These kids have to be sleeping. You gotta be sleeping. If you don't sleep, you're not gonna heal. Number five, train the immune system. Don't over sanitize, play outside, and you get gradual exposure versus just completely avoiding.

Number six, the sixth strategy, nervous system regulation. We talked about this a lot. We talked about this at our last workshop on Monday when we worked through hormones. Your nervous system is the master control system of the entire body. If your nervous system is stressed in a fight or flight stage, you're not gonna have a healthy immune system.

The reason why chiropractic care is so potent and powerful is that it's ability to affect the nervous system, can affect any other system of the body. It helps your immune system regulate. Why kids with allergies, asthma, and eczema get adjusted? To help their immune system regulate. It's a stressed nervous system creates a hyper reactive immune system.

Something that we offered our patients on Monday, and if you're listening, you're not a patient, call the office. We have a special offer we're doing for new patients. If you're listening to this podcast, for you, call the Real Health Co, and we'll talk to you about those details. Just mention that you heard about it on our podcast. So what's the big takeaway, right?

How do we process all of this? The big takeaway is allergies are not random. They are the result of a loss of oral tolerance, a dysregulated immune system, and a system that can be retrained. If you or your child are struggling with allergies, asthma, there's a reason, and at the Real Health Co, we don't chase symptoms, we find the cause. If you start applying some of these solutions, whether it's gut microbiome support or whether it's building immune tolerance, getting adjusted, right, changing nutrition, getting outside.

As you do those things, you'll start to see a shift in the immune system. It takes time and repetition. But when you get to the root cause and don't address it with just these short term symptom relievers, right, coming from pills, potions, lotions, shots, and surgery, then you can see true healing. The immune system is something that can be healed, and you have the ability to do so. I pray that this was super beneficial for you, added a lot of value to you in this journey.

It is allergy season, so let's make sure we're supporting our bodies now before we get into a crisis mode here in a few weeks. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. Our passion is to add value to your health care journey. Anything that we do, we want to do it within a community to help as many people as possible. Thanks for listening to episodes of Real Health Podcast.

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